You are completely off-base in assuming that someone who is good at art would be unqualified to do programming and should be discouraged from trying it. I have a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree in Illustration and Bachelor of Science degree in Computer Science that say otherwise.
I've never doubted that video games were good at developing the skills needed... well, for video games. And some of those apply to the real world. But parents worried whether their game-obsessed kids are developing other essential skills – such as critical thinking, understanding other people, carefully choosing between complex options, developing new ideas of their own, etc. – they still have reason to worry.
On a side note, I'll submit that everyone is an atheist, too, including religious folks: there is not just a single god that's ever been posited, after all.
Atheism isn't the disbelief in a god, but the disbelief in any god. Christians don't consider a Zoroastrian an atheist; they consider him someone who believes in a god... but the wrong one. And it'd be mutual. So your argument that their disbelief in Ahura Mazda makes Christians "atheists" of some kind is invalid.
If you were to bother... y'know.. investigating, you would find that a great many atheists arrive at that position following a great deal of investigation. Not scientific empirical experimentation necessarily, but certainly philosophical deliberation based on their studied observations of the world. After confirming that some arbitrarily large number of theist assertions appear to be untrue (e.g. the universe was created ~6000 years ago, God rewards faithfulness, Muhammad is the prophet of Allah), they conclude that the primary assertion of theists (God exists) is also untrue. You might challenge the soundness of their conclusion, but to say that "every atheist" accepts it "on blind faith and without further investigation" is demonstrably false.
You know the scenes in WWII movies (e.g. Casablanca) where the resistance or their allies provide bogus "authorization" papers to the Good Guys so they can evade arrest by the Nazis? That's kinda what MS is doing here. They're trying to be non-evil; give them credit for it.
Broadcast TV is a great example of a effective use of wireless technology. As a one-to-many, one-way method of communication with an indeterminate number of receiving stations, the use of radio waves makes perfect sense. ("Radio waves want to radiate.") Same with audio-only TV (aka radio). It's a great use for that bandwidth, not a waste.
Pretty much every other use of radio technology is less suited to the use of radio waves. You have an indeterminate number of concurrent users on the same frequencies, each trying to both broadcast and receive. They are systems that scale horribly, in terms of users and in terms of area. This is why cell service almost variably sucks, why wifi coverage sucks, and throwing more frequencies at the problem will only minimize/postpone the saturation problems. Copper and fiber are much better medium-distance and long-haul carriers, so the solution for most of these problems is more local (low-power) repeaters connected by actual wire, not just more frequencies.
Science or Rationalism is a belief in things that are proven. Religion is a belief in things that are not proven. Some of those beliefs contradict reality or logic, and are therefore signs of mental illness; ridicule them at your leisure. But some of them do not contradict reality or logic, and are merely untestable hypotheses; the calls for witch-burning against them are a bit uncivilized.
(Furthermore, before one goes on a crusade against people with mental illness, please have yourself tested for Asperger Syndrome and look then in the mirror for a bit. Thanks.)
In the last few months I've been to the theater several times (which I admit is really 20th century), but I haven't rented any DVDs lately. ESPN3... are you kidding? No Hulu or other streaming substitutes for network programming: for the past few months there has simply not been anything on that I want to watch.
Granted, I'll be firing up the TV again shortly now that the few series I'm interested in watching will have new episodes again. But I don't know of any new ones that I want to watch. The trend in how I spend my free time has been gradually drifting away from TV for years now. And studies show that I'm not alone.
One of the jokes circulating at the time of the landings was that, because of the nature of the testing procedure, the Vikings wouldn't discover life on Mars, they'd just destroy it. Of course CmdrTaco was still only a spermatogonium and an ovum at the time, so the joke didn't get posted to/.
"Call quality is reasonable but leaves a lot to be desired."
If you think call quality is inadequate on Plain Old Telephone Service, have you ever tried using wireless phones? On POTS we used to commercials that promised "you can hear a pin drop". Now it's "can you hear me now?"
The C64 didn't use an acoustically-coupled modem; it used a 300baud handset replacement that plugged into a port on the computer and connected directly to the base of a desk or wall phone.</pedant>
(Note: I'm not getting Google Instant yet, just ye olde fashioned guess-ahead autocompletion.)
When this was first rumored, I warned that "child por(traits)" might be unsafe to search for with this system, since it might guess along the way that you were looking for something... you shouldn't. Apparently they anticipated this, because the several autocompletion possibilities they offer for "child po" disappear altogether when you change that to "child por" (including "child portraits", even though it still matches).
It's online advertisers who are going to pick up on this report, modifying all those dancing figures in their verdammt animated ads to do more head-and-torso wobbling.
A proper open tablet could pretty much wipe out netbooks.
You mean like the TabletPCs did? The ones that a figure with the visibility of Bill Gates used to keep promoting as the Next Big Thing in computers?
No. Keyboardless tablets have a niche. A much bigger one now that someone's doing the hardware and software right for it (i.e. touch interface, with touch-designed OS), but still a specific niche. Netbooks have another niche. So do 17" laptops. And desktops with 24-inch screens and 101-keyboards. And smartphones with thumbpads. Etc. I don't see any of them going away.
Slashdot Mirror
You are completely off-base in assuming that someone who is good at art would be unqualified to do programming and should be discouraged from trying it. I have a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree in Illustration and Bachelor of Science degree in Computer Science that say otherwise.
I've never doubted that video games were good at developing the skills needed... well, for video games. And some of those apply to the real world. But parents worried whether their game-obsessed kids are developing other essential skills – such as critical thinking, understanding other people, carefully choosing between complex options, developing new ideas of their own, etc. – they still have reason to worry.
Atheism isn't the disbelief in a god, but the disbelief in any god. Christians don't consider a Zoroastrian an atheist; they consider him someone who believes in a god... but the wrong one. And it'd be mutual. So your argument that their disbelief in Ahura Mazda makes Christians "atheists" of some kind is invalid.
This is obviously a hoax. Any early elementary school student can tell you that "diamond" and "star" are two entirely different shapes.
If you were to bother... y'know.. investigating, you would find that a great many atheists arrive at that position following a great deal of investigation. Not scientific empirical experimentation necessarily, but certainly philosophical deliberation based on their studied observations of the world. After confirming that some arbitrarily large number of theist assertions appear to be untrue (e.g. the universe was created ~6000 years ago, God rewards faithfulness, Muhammad is the prophet of Allah), they conclude that the primary assertion of theists (God exists) is also untrue. You might challenge the soundness of their conclusion, but to say that "every atheist" accepts it "on blind faith and without further investigation" is demonstrably false.
You know the scenes in WWII movies (e.g. Casablanca) where the resistance or their allies provide bogus "authorization" papers to the Good Guys so they can evade arrest by the Nazis? That's kinda what MS is doing here. They're trying to be non-evil; give them credit for it.
Ever since President Adlai Stevenson lost the Cold War in 1955, silly!
Broadcast TV is a great example of a effective use of wireless technology. As a one-to-many, one-way method of communication with an indeterminate number of receiving stations, the use of radio waves makes perfect sense. ("Radio waves want to radiate.") Same with audio-only TV (aka radio). It's a great use for that bandwidth, not a waste.
Pretty much every other use of radio technology is less suited to the use of radio waves. You have an indeterminate number of concurrent users on the same frequencies, each trying to both broadcast and receive. They are systems that scale horribly, in terms of users and in terms of area. This is why cell service almost variably sucks, why wifi coverage sucks, and throwing more frequencies at the problem will only minimize/postpone the saturation problems. Copper and fiber are much better medium-distance and long-haul carriers, so the solution for most of these problems is more local (low-power) repeaters connected by actual wire, not just more frequencies.
The comments above about mental illness? Here ya go.
I thought Obama was Kenyan muslin; I was going to make a dress out of him.
And here we have the pot calling the porcelain teacup black.
Science or Rationalism is a belief in things that are proven. Religion is a belief in things that are not proven. Some of those beliefs contradict reality or logic, and are therefore signs of mental illness; ridicule them at your leisure. But some of them do not contradict reality or logic, and are merely untestable hypotheses; the calls for witch-burning against them are a bit uncivilized.
(Furthermore, before one goes on a crusade against people with mental illness, please have yourself tested for Asperger Syndrome and look then in the mirror for a bit. Thanks.)
If you read the project description, you'll see that they are in fact hiring an orchestra to do this. Nothing wrong with that IMO.
If anyone is unhappy with the quality of the performers they hire.... recruit your own. That's what the public domain is all about.
Kick in a few bucks and they'll mail it to you themselves.
In the last few months I've been to the theater several times (which I admit is really 20th century), but I haven't rented any DVDs lately. ESPN3... are you kidding? No Hulu or other streaming substitutes for network programming: for the past few months there has simply not been anything on that I want to watch.
Granted, I'll be firing up the TV again shortly now that the few series I'm interested in watching will have new episodes again. But I don't know of any new ones that I want to watch. The trend in how I spend my free time has been gradually drifting away from TV for years now. And studies show that I'm not alone.
I can't help wondering if they're fighting over the best deck-chair seating on the Titanic. I haven't turned my TV on in months.
"Buttons"?
Shick - cli-cli-cli-cli-click.
Shick - cli-cli-click.
Shick - cli-cli-cli-cli-cli-cli-click.....
One of the jokes circulating at the time of the landings was that, because of the nature of the testing procedure, the Vikings wouldn't discover life on Mars, they'd just destroy it. Of course CmdrTaco was still only a spermatogonium and an ovum at the time, so the joke didn't get posted to /.
I had the same immediate interpretation. Except that the Martians weren't on North America proper, but Greenland.
"Call quality is reasonable but leaves a lot to be desired."
If you think call quality is inadequate on Plain Old Telephone Service, have you ever tried using wireless phones? On POTS we used to commercials that promised "you can hear a pin drop". Now it's "can you hear me now?"
Especially with Slashdot's no-edit, no-delete policy on posted comments. It would effectively disable the Backspace key.
The C64 didn't use an acoustically-coupled modem; it used a 300baud handset replacement that plugged into a port on the computer and connected directly to the base of a desk or wall phone.</pedant>
(Note: I'm not getting Google Instant yet, just ye olde fashioned guess-ahead autocompletion.)
When this was first rumored, I warned that "child por(traits)" might be unsafe to search for with this system, since it might guess along the way that you were looking for something... you shouldn't. Apparently they anticipated this, because the several autocompletion possibilities they offer for "child po" disappear altogether when you change that to "child por" (including "child portraits", even though it still matches).
It's online advertisers who are going to pick up on this report, modifying all those dancing figures in their verdammt animated ads to do more head-and-torso wobbling.
You mean like the TabletPCs did? The ones that a figure with the visibility of Bill Gates used to keep promoting as the Next Big Thing in computers?
No. Keyboardless tablets have a niche. A much bigger one now that someone's doing the hardware and software right for it (i.e. touch interface, with touch-designed OS), but still a specific niche. Netbooks have another niche. So do 17" laptops. And desktops with 24-inch screens and 101-keyboards. And smartphones with thumbpads. Etc. I don't see any of them going away.